Last updated on December 10th, 2025 at 07:32 pm
MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield – Board Game Review
MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield is a Board/Utilities/Card game from ARCANE TINMEN APS, first launched in 22nd April 2020.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 3,643+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield Stand Out
Dragon Shield – MTG Scanner & Card Manager is the ultimate tool for scanning, valuing, organizing, and trading your Magic cards. Instantly recognize cards in any language, build powerful MTG decks, track your collection’s value over time, and connect with friends.
Built for collectors and competitive players alike, this app helps you master your Magic: The Gathering™ experience.
SOCIAL & FRIENDS
Add and connect with friends on the app
View your friends' collection, decks, wish and trade list
Share your own lists and discover new cards through your network
SCAN MAGIC CARDS
Instantly scan cards in any language using advanced image recognition
Real-time translation of foreign-language cards
Check daily prices from TCGPlayer, CardMarket, CardKingdom and MTGMintCard
Track 30-day price history for any Magic card
Find format legality and oracle text and official rulings
COLLECTION MANAGER
Organize your MTG cards into custom folders
Add folder images and track value over time
Export your collection to CSV or text for backups and trades
Stay informed with built-in card price tracking
MULTIPLE SORTING OPTIONS AND FILTERS
Get folder statistics (Mana Cost, Card Color, etc.)
MTG DECK BUILDER
Build decks with full support for sideboards and filtering
Export decks to CSV or text to share with friends or import into tournaments
See deck stats like mana curve, color balance, and type spread
TRADE TOOL
Compare the trade value between two players instantly
See exactly who's ahead in the trade and by how much
Use wishlists and tradelists to plan and manage your deals
TOP MOVERS: WINNERS & LOSERS
Track which Magic cards are rising or falling in value
Filter by format, date range, or even just your own collection
See the top card winners and losers within your collection
WEEKLY COLLECTION EMAILS
Get automatic weekly emails with stats about your MTG collection
See value changes, new additions, and pricing trends over time
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 21st November 2025
Recent improvements include:
Introducing the new Pro Scanner! Scan and detect the correct Magic card, set and version with unmatched precision.
Keep your collection accurate and up-to-date with every scan.
Enjoy faster, smoother performance and bug fixes for a seamless MTG card tracking experience.
Download & Availability
MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get MTG Scanner – Dragon Shield on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Im really loving the functions of the app but we cant get our avatar the last airbender tokens to scan in and we cant find them on the manual entry, are there cards not processed in yet? Specifically: Ally T 4, 5, 7, 8; soldier T 2, and Spirit T 3. Help would be appreciated please and thank you.
The latest update appears to have broken the card view. It lists one card per letter in the alphabet, for a total of just 26 cards. Please fix this as soon as youre able.
So for this app the scanner is second to none. It hits the card every time (you still gotta make sure its the right series and number). The only issue we have is the card values. It will say a card that is over 50 cents is 0 cents and other price issues like that. Had a 3 dollar card on TCG listed as worth one penny on here. If they could sync the scanner and cards with TCGs actual prices this would be an unstoppable app. Or if Dragon Shield got with TCG to allow TCG to utilize this scanner in their app then it would be amazing.
We love this scanner as a way to organize and export our collection to csv for buy listing. The issue is once cards are sold removing them from your inventory is a painful and arduous process. There are two options that we see. Either marking it as sold, where you are then required to input a price before moving on, or deleting it. In both cases when we are sorting alphabetical and by set and do either of these, once done it jumps all the way back to the top of the list and we have to scroll all the way back down to find the set we were working in. Every other aspect of this app is so well done for speed during input, we dont understand how this part was overlooked, but we hope they can change it. An option to select multiple cards at a time or to import another csv list to remove cards would be huge. Otherwise good app if you dont ever plan to remove cards from your collection.
We have our whole collection in here and have little to no problems for the most part as others have put the scanner can be selective with certain cards and colors but thats easy enough to get around. Our main problem is secret lair cards are added really late after release so we have to keep checking if we can finally add them to our collection.
Ive been using this app for over a year now and we love it. The scanner mostly works great. However, sometimes it will recognize a black card in low light as the card Savanna. The ads function oddly too, the countdown in the corner goes from 5 to 6 to 5 to 4 and so on. All issues aside this is a great app and we absolutely recommend it to anyone who has played MTG for a long time or is just getting into it. (we stg if it scans black market connections as savanna one more time im finna go buy an alpha savannah and eat it).
Scanner is great. Inventory is great. Account is great BUT ManaBox does all that for free. No annoying adds ever 5-10 scans. Check out ManaBox.
Reminder to not become overcommitted to we used this app to keep track of our collection for about two years. Until the recent update everything worked well. AFTER the recent update, where we had to subscribe to a free trial/pay to view and access our collection, nothing works correctly. Cards arent showing up in our folders after adding them. We now have some 200 rares filed away that didnt get added to our digital list, making the first lapse since we started cataloguing. It is enough of a headache to figure out what didnt get added that we will likely move away from this app entirely as a result.
Too bad it deletes all of the hard work we did scanning all of our cards. We went on the app and oop surprise! Everything was gone! We backed up our cards and thats gone too. The scanning part is fantastic. Its too bad Ill have to go somewhere else to save our cards down. Cancelling our subscription and peacing out.
The app was alright before, a bit finicky scanning full art cards or foil. But the most recent update took our collection away. Not sure why but our library is gone. Might delete.
We love this app. Super efficient for scanning our cards in and monitoring the value. 2 requests – Prevent our phone from going to sleep when we are scanning cards in. It is annoying to continue having to tap it between scans. – Make bulk scanning set agnostic or add a mode that auto accepts scanned cards after a timer. The scanning process is so reliable we dont need to be looking at it.
The scanner is close to amazing but very inconsistent. For example we can sometimes go through 15 cards of the same set in 30 seconds. But then it'll get completely stuck on one card and Im spending 30 seconds trying from every angle distance and lighting to get the scanner to see it. Then it'll pick up just the corner of another card and somehow telepathically know what it is. Then it'll give us an entirely wrong card other times. Its overall worth using, if it takes longer than 5 seconds just set it aside and type it in later. (Yes databases all up to date) our biggest disappointment with the app is it feels like it is built for a merchant not a casual player. Extremely simple and intuitive things being overlooked has us scratching our head. We were hoping for a digital folder where we can easily flip through cards and work on decks from what we have in our collection. But there is no way to build decks out of your inventory. Or vice versa. You have to scan cards once for your inventory and scan them again to be in a deck. The two features are completely independent with no synchronization between them. The best you can do to work around this is ignore the deck building feature entirely and only have lists of scanned cards instead. That way you can look through what you have and send it over. Which would be okayish, but that will dismantle any permanent organization you would assume to get from something digital. Also major QOL: There are 3 ways to view your cards. A grid, condensed list, and an expanded list that shows prices. Why is it that if we want to bulk select cards from a condensed list we have to tap twice. Once to expand each entry and then again in order to select it? All just to show us the price ranges of a less than 25cent card? If we wanted to view them that way we would've clicked the button to have them all expanded in the first place. And we don't sell cards. We do not care or need to be reminded that this card is $.08 and this one is $.25 If it was worth anything we would know already. We bought it. It would be way more helpful to be able to customize what is displayed. Either relevant card information or prices. And better yet to not auto expand making it take more than twice as long than is necessary when you are trying to quickly sort from a list. There could just be a button on the entries to expand it if you wanted a reminder instead.
When we scan a card to add it to our inventory, as far as we can tell there is no way to add that card to a deck. In order to track value in our inventory and organize cards into decks within the app, each card needs to be scanned twice. As a collector, imagine how frustrating and tedious that is.
We love the scanning and being able to build decks. Being able to add cards to a deck straight from your inventory would be a huge improvement. Seems like it could be an easy update. Add a little edit feature that allows you to add to decks. Even a way to monitor which decks each card is in.
We have an oversize card as our commander that when we scan only appears as the normal size version so we are not getting the correct pricing for our deck and whenever we try to search for the oversize card or other cards we have that are unique they do not appear.
This app is great. So far getting excellent accuracy with the scanning. The only thing that is keeping us from 5 stars is being able to use the cards we scanned in our collection to build a deck. Having to rescan or type into a search bar just to build a deck is a little too tedious for our liking. Also having the deck types (standard, commander, etc) would be nice as well.
The primary thing we love about this app is the speed of the bulk scanning, havent found one that is faster, just be sure to sort out foils into a separate pile. We havent had much success using it with with showcase cards, and for some reason black cards regardless of what lighting or position we use are incredibly difficult to scan, sometimes impossible. We usually have to switch to ManaBox which is slower compared to bulk scanning feature this app has, but you can only scan what you scan! Id honestly consider premium if we could use this scanner for all our needs, and didnt have to edit our cvs sheet to export for moxfield. As is, we can only entertain it for tracking high value cards, since we cant scan any of our bulk black cards.
Easy to understand, easy access to sleeves. No complaints here.
Overall, very useful app. We like that it allows us to sort our cards easily and move them between folders. The win or loss percentage is also helpful. We have scanned our entire collection with very few problems. There are a few things that prevent it from getting the fifth star, though. For some reason, it keeps thinking things are the card Savannah multiple times when using the scan feature. It is also very bad at scanning Saga cards. Finally, it would be really helpful if there were a way we could access statistics such as colors and rarity percentages for the whole collection. We can do it for individual folders and decks, but there isnt a way to export the list of cards and import it into a new deck.
Great app DS team! If we create a deck can we have a way to push those cards to our inventory would be awesome. Also export into MTGA format would be great. Currently have to use Chat GPT to convert it for us.
You cant scan any of your border less cards.
Love this app, but it needs an improvement on the deck building. We shouldnt have to scan cards into our inventory and into our deck separately. We know that Android has to future, please add to Apple.
It drives us insane that there is no way to build a deck out of your inventory and have to rescan your cards in. Select cards -> add to deck seems like the most basic and intuitive function an app like this should have. Also a function to auto add precons to your inventory. Seems like we should be able to just say we bought the thing and have those cards populate. But other than that works great.
It does everything you expect, an issue we ran into is youll pay for premium and itll charge you without giving premium features.
This amazing app helps us keep track of all our cards and keeps us up to date on all the card prices.
We love this app most of the time but when Im trying to scan cards that are in sleeves, dragon shields mind you, the scanner can not seem to pick it up because their sleeves reflect every bit of light in the room.
Please oh please stop updating the layout every other week. As far as functionality goes it works pretty well most of the time. Or at least when its not assuming every third card is serialized or Savannah. Just stop changing the layout constantly, its only getting harder to navigate. Edit: UI has been updated again and it is worse. Lost the ability to jump between colors or card types quickly. Horrible filter over foil cards making previews difficult to read. If there were an option to revert that would be great.
Ive been using the app to track our entire collection, but now we cant get into our collection anymore. App keeps freezing.
Does not scan the card for defects or quality, just pulls from a generic database. This would be a great feature to have.
Ive only had the app for two days, but Ive not been able to get the scanner to work at all. No sleeve, not in direct light, Ive tried laying the card down, standing the card up. It just does not seem to work. Adding a capture button would make it much less of a hassle to scan cards.
The database is sufficient; would be fun to see Arena exclusive cards added. The UX is amazing; we especially like how the app doesnt promt you to turn on notifications until you first visit the notifications menu. We do wish that after adding a card to a deck and returning to the text card search that the existing text in the search bar was autohighlighted so that we could immideately start typing the next card we want to search. All searches might be even better if they incorporated fuzzy searching. Additionally, the app desperately needs background app refresh downloading to decrease wait times at launch.
This app does really well at cataloguing and keeping track of prices for your cards and helps keep it all organized. Love how quickly the camera picks up on cards most of the time and changing editions is honestly relatively easy. Our biggest issue is the lack of sync between inventory and deck lists. While we get there may be some nuance to deck lists that may make it difficult to have them transfer 1 to 1 (e.g. Your deck list has cards you want to get but dont have), it would be easier to be able to have that synchronicity and just adjust as needed in one tab or the other. It feels very much of a hassle to essentially scan a card twice for it to show up in two places. We dont know anything about app coding, so it could be more difficult than we understand. But its a feature thats making it difficult for us to want to continue updating the app with our deck collection, even if its such a useful tool to do so.
So first off this app has been amazing for a new returned MTG player like ourselves. We played back in middle and we have A LOT of cards from then that Im going through and scanning. The best way to get consistent scans is to sit down and put your phone on a stand. We see a lot of people complaining about it not getting the set right however when we put our phone on a stand, the accuracy is now at like 98%. So overall the app has been great. We also like the fact you can change the prices to be from different online retailers. A few things we would love to see added would be as follows QUICK CHANGES: First off when you scan a card and you got the wrong set but didnt realize it until after you added it to your inventory there is no way to quickly change the amount you just added or remove it completely. You have to back out of scanning and go search for it in your inventory. SET SEARCH: Also when you do happen to get the wrong set, when you go to change it you get a massive list sometimes. It would be nice if we could search that list for the 3 letters that represent the set or the numbers. Example: we added a land card just to see because it was a pretty cool one. We only have up because well land is in every set and holy cow is that list long. No way we were finding the right set for that. Just a simple search function would be nice for that. DECKS: Probably one last thing would be the ability to add cards from our inventory straight into our deck area without having to rescan them. Then it also kind of makes changing cards in and out a bit time consuming. EXPORT DATA: The absolute best thing we would love to see is the ability to export all our cards to our computer to like MTGGoldfish or something. We would 10000% pay for premium if we had that ability. We might be missing it but we have not found that feature so far. That would be the best thing they could do. Other than that the app has been super helpful and useful. So thank you for speeding up the process of logging all our cards.
The app does a pretty good job at recognizing cards when theyre scanned. We do like how we can sort our cards into different categories. Im hoping in the future they add search by tribal categories or keyword on the cards description. We will also say that about 10% of the time our cards will scan as a Savanna. We do like how the app shows you if your cards have gained or lost money, but we wish there was a way to just show all cards with their current values flat out. Because sorting by current price is kind of confusing. Overall, great app and we cant wait to see the updates they make.
Its only looking at the card illustration! If the boarder is different or the series marker is different or the copyright date is different, youre on your own to select the correct version. Thats fine for one-offs but when youre trying to scan a thousand cards it gets old fast.
Imagine you have a thousand cards to scan, like we do, and for each one you have to do this: 1. Scan 2. Tap list tab 3. Select Add to 4. Select list 5. Select language 6. Select condition 7. Click save Theres not even a bulk scan feature?! Theres no language recognition? Waste of time.
We see a lot of comments that it just scans the picture but why? Also no easy way to edit once you scan the cards so you cant bulk scan and then go back and change say a regular to an extended art. Also does not want to scan in any lighting.
Only feature we feel is miss is the ability to check out cards from the library and check them into a deck in the deck section.
We were so excited to try out this app and downloaded it right away. As soon as we opened it we were sadly disappointed! How in the world could you offer an app for iPad and not have it landscape??? That is sooo aggravating.
Exactly what we were looking for to catalog our collection. The app supplies card values from TCG player without having to search each card individually. It also make it easier to research cards for new deck builds and gives you rules information for the cards. This had to of been created by someone that actually cares about both collecting and playing the game.
The scanner works great but the premium is broken and the customer service doesnt care. When we contacted them about an error at first they said they were looking into it then after a couple months they just straight up ignored us. The premium version is a scam. Not worth the yearly sub.
The scan feature works really well but, despite the app description saying you can do it, we could not find any way to add a card from our inventory to a deck. It just wants us to scan cards directly to the deck, which isnt useful to us. We want to build a deck WITHIN the app, not manually. We dont need an app to build a deck manually. Likewise, we could find no way to search our collection, once cards are scanned in. Not even just by card name. Which seems like an insane oversight. Why else would you scan thousands of cards?! This app is like a powerful electric screwdriver that no bits fit. Great in theory, useless in practice.
Latest update made selecting card versions unavailable. The scroll wheel to cycle through is gone.
Recent update is not usable on iPhone 14 Pro Max. Recent update that adds friends and sharing inventory etc destroyed the app. Stay clear.
This is a very good tool to keep inventory of the thousands of cards that any CCG player would accumulate over the years of playing. We love that you can add decks to the catalog. We wish the pricing of the cards would translate over to the deck side so you know how much you have invested in the deck itself.
Only manages to scan half our cards the other half we have to hold in front of the camera for 5 minutes (we timed it), so we give up, would literally be faster for us to type into an excel sheet.
So first off this app has been amazing for a new returned MTG player like ourselves. We played back in middle and we have A LOT of cards from then that Im going through and scanning. The best way to get consistent scans is to sit down and put your phone on a stand. We see a lot of people complaining about it not getting the set right however when we put our phone on a stand, the accuracy is now at like 98%. So overall the app has been great. We also like the fact you can change the prices to be from different online retailers. A few things we would love to see added would be as follows QUICK CHANGES: First off when you scan a card and you got the wrong set but didnt realize it until after you added it to your inventory there is no way to quickly change the amount you just added or remove it completely. You have to back out of scanning and go search for it in your inventory. SET SEARCH: Also when you do happen to get the wrong set, when you go to change it you get a massive list sometimes. It would be nice if we could search that list for the 3 letters that represent the set or the numbers. Example: we added a land card just to see because it was a pretty cool one. We only have up because well land is in every set and holy cow is that list long. No way we were finding the right set for that. Just a simple search function would be nice for that. DECKS: Probably one last thing would be the ability to add cards from our inventory straight into our deck area without having to rescan them. Then it also kind of makes changing cards in and out a bit time consuming. EXPORT DATA: The absolute best thing we would love to see is the ability to export all our cards to our computer to like MTGGoldfish or something. We would 10000% pay for premium if we had that ability. We might be missing it but we have not found that feature so far. That would be the best thing they could do. Other than that the app has been super helpful and useful. So thank you for speeding up the process of logging all our cards.
This app is an absolute god-send for keeping track of our collection so we don't have to thumb through our card boxes/binders to know what we have to build/trade with. That being said, we wish there was an option to filter cards based off of set/color etc. The grouping/sorting is good, but we'd love to see some filters.
Please expand the set selection wheel. Its kind of small and there is a lot of unused screen real estate that can be utilized.
Doesnt scan all cards. You can type them in but you cant find everything. Some cards have not been added to the inventory list. We can find some cards of the new LOTR crossover but for the most part nothing. Just the main legendary creatures like Frodo. Not worth the price either as scan doesnt work all the time regardless of lighting sometimes it just freezes and does nothing.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 8.0.5
- Size: 228.67 MB
- iOS: 17.0 or later
- Languages: EN, PT
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: ARCANE TINMEN APS
Last updated: 21st November 2025 | Genre: Board, Utilities | Developer: ARCANE TINMEN APS